


Myth-Making

by Nonsuch



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Complete, F/M, Internal Monologue, One Shot, Post-TRoS, infant death (mentioned), probably not one to read if you're a luke fan, rage at luke is real, this is me aiming for carthasis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:02:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25884772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nonsuch/pseuds/Nonsuch
Summary: Rey, child of Jakku, has idolised Luke Skywalker since was six. How will she cope when her idol proves to be the unwitting arbiter of her pain?
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 14
Kudos: 60





	Myth-Making

I first heard of Luke Skywalker when I was six years old and starving. My parents’ faces were fading fast from my memory, and the only solid thing I possessed was the conviction that they’d return for me one day. 

There was an old woman who travelled the galaxy as a storyteller. She worked for tips, so admittance to her tent depended on you having something on you that she considered worth having. I’d never heard her before, barely knew what a story was, but some of the other scavengers told me I should go - one of them, Mari, had had a good trade after stripping an old Imperial walker and took me along after giving Unkar Plutt a bribe for my time. Mari gave the storyteller a rusted datachip as payment, which was quickly and gleefully pocketed before the curtain covering the entrance was drawn back for us to enter. 

People - a mix of scavengers, merchants and passing pilots - filtered in with the slow, sun-drained lethargy common to the people of Jakku after sunset. The audience sat on the thread-bare cushions supplied, but since I was so small Mari held me in her bony lap. She’d looked out for me ever since she’d caught Plutt shaking me by the shoulders for spilling oil over the seat of a speeder, and it’s probably thanks to her that he didn’t kill me. I didn’t know it when I knew her, but I’d later discover that she’d lost a baby years and years before during a famine - I guess I was something of a stand-in, a small, vulnerable thing that she enjoyed protecting when she had the means to. 

(Mari died two years after she took me to see the storyteller, stabbed in the neck by a fellow scavenger who considered her find his own.)

Mari fed me little pieces of a rice cake as the storyteller began - they didn’t satisfy me, but they kept me from fainting. The old woman bent low to activate an ancient holo-projector, which rumbled loudly before finally emitting a brilliant beam of light. The quivering light, scattered with flecks of sand, gradually coalesced into the figure of a young man. He had bright blond hair and wore a neat black suit. He smiled, looking right through me. I remember being amazed by how _clean_ he was. His hair shone. His teeth shone. His skin shone. He looked a bit like what I imagined a god might - perfect and untouched by pain. 

His name was Luke Skywalker, and he was a great hero - the greatest hero. He’d emerged from an obscure sand planet, a poor boy without parents (‘like me!’ I thought, instantly intoxicated), and possessed the power of the Force. He could move spaceships with his mind - compel others to act with a single thought. He’d destroyed the monstrous Death Star - a battle station that could obliterate planets - with a single shot from his X-wing. He’d trained under the greatest Jedi master of the Old Republic, Yoda, and saved the galaxy by defeating the Emperor who had held the galaxy in subjugation. 

There was a long pause after that word, which I’d never heard before. I didn’t understand it, but I didn’t need to know the meaning to appreciate that Luke Skywalker had accomplished something incredible. Open-mouthed, I met the storyteller’s eyes and asked “what did he do next?”.

The old woman chuckled. “He vanished, child. No one knows where Luke Skywalker is, or if he’ll ever return to help us again”. 

A man in the back row, a scavenger from Mari’s gang, scoffed. “He didn’t help us much, did he? What’s changed for Jakku since the Empire fell?”

This comment sparked a lively debate that quickly escalated into an all-out brawl.The storyteller shrieked as her precious holo-projector toppled over, the gleaming figure of Luke Skywalker dispersing the moment it hit the sand. 

The storyteller never returned to Jakku after that, but I’d heard enough to sustain me. Luke Skywalker, from that point on, was a fixture in my mind. I’d learned the dangers of allowing memories to slip, and I refused to let my memories of the galaxy’s greatest hero fade from my mind as my parents’ faces had. 

For the first six years of my life on Jakku I slept in a metal crate lined with straw that was tucked into Plutt’s trading stand, and after the storyteller left I told myself the tale of Luke Skywalker every night as I was falling asleep. I’d say it aloud at first, in a whisper so Plutt wouldn’t beat me for the disturbance. Later, as I grew more secure that the story remained just as vivid as it had been on that first night, I recited it in my mind. 

As soon as I was big enough to begin scavenging myself, I started finding ways to be more like Luke Skywalker. The first time I found an undisturbed ship far out in the wastes, newly exposed in the aftermath of a storm, I kept it secret for a week to give myself time to explore. I heaved the desiccated body of the pilot out of the way, yanked off their helmet to place it on my head and sat in their seat, leaning forward so my little hands could prod the buttons on the control panel. I was nine years old, and merely playing pretend; the desert was my playground as much as my prison.

It was months before I found a datachip with a flight sim, and three year after that when I finally found a device capable of playing it. The first ship I learned to fly was an X-wing; I studied at night, and made Jakku’s biggest moon my Death Star. I imagined what it would be like to watch a moon shatter from a press of my thumb on the gearstick - whether it would wink out into total darkness in a blink, or expand in a dazzling pulse of light before vanishing forever.

As I’d climbed to the peak of Ahch-To - knowing I had the Force, knowing that the hero of my childhood was waiting for me - the image of the Luke Skywalker from the tent blazed in my mind, as vivid and bright as he’d been in the storyteller’s holo. When I saw him at last and he drew his hood back, my heart fell. His face was dirty, his hair dishevelled. He was old and he certainly wasn’t smiling. Worst of all, he seemed to have no presence at all - the throbbing connection I’d felt with Kylo Ren had been terrifying, yes, but it had been _something_. I’d felt his fear and anger and pain, and he’d felt the same things in me. With Luke, it was like the air between us was dead. There was no trace of the Force in him at all, and I was stricken by the realisation that the Luke Skywalker I’d worshipped since I was six no longer existed.

I remember my time with the Resistance less clearly than I recall my childhood. I no longer had to single-mindedly dedicate myself to survival, and life was a far less vivid struggle as a result. I was nominally part of something, apparently the figurehead of a new revolution against tyranny, but I never really felt that. Instead, I felt like a symbol - I was acutely aware that, in the minds of the people I fought with, I was a lesser replica of Luke Skywalker.

I felt a certain sense of obligation, I suppose - a duty to please my friends and satisfy the directives of the Resistance’s command base. It was merely the obligation of a performer. I had honestly felt more sincere, more authentic, when I thought of destroying the moon of Jakku while on a flight sim. That was a dream that I’d nourished inside myself since I was small, and that dream had sustained me as I’d laboured on an empty stomach and lulled myself to sleep in a crate. The dream of being the new Luke Skywalker might have been founded on a false myth, but that didn’t render the comfort it had given me any less real. 

In the absence of my childhood dream, I craved something simple - connection. I loved my friends, and would have died to protect them, but I never really knew how to speak with them. I’d never had real friends on Jakku, you see, so I suppose I was poorly equipped for friendship - the other scavengers either used me to serve a need of their own, or betrayed me after getting me to relax enough to share something useful with them. I could trust my new friends not to exploit or double-cross me as the other scavengers had, but I couldn’t trust them to understand me.

The only person in the galaxy who truly knew me was Kylo Ren, and this was a fact I hated beyond description. We understood each other on a level beyond language, and whenever we connected after Crait no words passed between us. We both intuitively understood these fleeting connections to be something higher than ourselves, and it would have debased them to fling insults or accusations. We simply looked at one another, quietly soaking in the fullness of each other’s presence, until the bond quivered and finally snapped. 

Whenever he vanished, tears would form in my eyes because the air would feel dead and cold as it had on the clifftop on Ahch-To. The first time the bond snapped after Crait, I realised - with horror - that what I wanted was locked away in Kylo Ren. It was real in a way that the Luke Skywalker of my imagination had never been. But I’d never possess it, because Kylo Ren was evil and wicked and could never be with me.

But I was wrong. We did come together in the end, and I’ll cherish every moment I had with Ben Solo: squeezing his hand as I emerged back into consciousness; caressing his face and marvelling at how kindness had transformed it; clumsily pressing my mouth to his and feeling a jolt of pure, selfish joy at the knowledge that I was finally loved without reservation. 

I’ll never forget how young he looked as he slipped back, his arms - which had squeezed me more strongly than anyone had in my life - draining of life as they fell limp at his sides. 

A part of me died forever when he did, and I guess I spent the time after Exegol trying to fight against that. I took the Skywalker name for a little while - by declaring myself part of the myth, I imagined, I might be able to regain some of the comfort it had once given me. It gave me no comfort at all, though, and I abandoned it after a few days. 

A year after Ben died, I’d still had no sign of him. He was never spoken of. I couldn’t bring myself to tell my friends what he had been to me. I didn’t have the words.

In the middle of the night of the anniversary, I slipped out of the base and stole a ship. I travelled to a forest on a planet I didn’t know the name of. I found a spot where I was surrounded by shrieking birds; a thunderstorm was coming, and the sky was dark with impending rain. I crossed my legs and meditated, rising into the air as I imagined a different life for myself and Ben. A life where Luke Skywalker was irrelevant. 

_Han Solo and his teenage son stop off on Jakku for fuel. The boy, bored, wanders off, kicking idly at the sand but stopping when he hears a cry. A little girl rubs her eyes and takes great, gulping sobs. The boy scoops her up in his arms - whirling her around until she laughs and opens her eyes to look at him for the first time. They stare and stare, and they both know nothing can separate them from that moment on._

_Within the hour, Han Solo has shot Unkar Plutt in his great, meaty thigh and three people have left in the Falcon. The girl is safe again - she never wants for food, or warmth, or kindness. The boy is untroubled now, and tells his mother when the sinister voices start resonating in his mind - she helps him, teaches him strength, and he doesn’t have to go away to his uncle anymore._

_The girl grows up and falls in love with the boy - of course, he loves her just as much as she loves him. They marry, and they live for years and years in perfect happiness, untouched by war. Inseparable to the last, they die on the same day._

I jolted back into consciousness, furious with myself. It was wretched. Hopeless, futile. The feeble fantasy of someone who had never had love modelled for them.

I screamed as the thunder cracked and the birds were driven to a pitch of fear above me. I screamed and screamed until my throat was raw, gasping for breath in between shrieks. Breathless, I plunged from the air into the mud, landing hard on my knees and bending double as I sobbed beneath the pouring rain. 

I heard the heavy tread of feet in the mud behind me, and my heart sunk. “Leave me alone, Luke.” I managed, my voice ragged. “I don’t need your _comfort_.” Luke had followed me like a spectre since Ben’s death, blandly preaching serenity but only stoking my anger. 

A hand found my shoulder, and I froze. I stopped gasping, and looked up. My tears were cleared by the rain as I shakily got to my feet, staring at the figure of Ben Solo, as young, vulnerable and beautiful as he had been in my final memories of him. 

And we stared and stared, taking in each other’s faces until we both smiled. We clutched at one another, embracing in the rain and gasping for joy.

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically my attempt at trying to create some post-TROS catharsis, with some Luke rage thrown in as the throughline. I don't think it's entirely successful, but it's something I finished and I'm at least pleased with it as an attempt. 
> 
> It's been several years since I posted anything, so I'd welcome any thoughts/feedback in the comments. Thank you for reading!


End file.
